Barnaby Joyce has defended the Turnbull government’s plan to decentralise the federal bureaucracy, saying it will help public servants find more affordable housing as they move to regional areas.
He dismissed the idea that the plan ought to be subject to a cost-benefit analysis, saying that shouldn’t be the sole determinant of government decisions.
“If you say we will premise everything purely and solely on cost-benefit analysis, I tell you what will happen,” Joyce said on Thursday. “We wouldn’t be having this press conference in Canberra because it would never exist, it wouldn’t have passed the cost-benefit analysis and this great city, incredibly beautiful city, wouldn’t be here.
“Opera House, forget about that. Fireworks displays on New Year’s Day, there would be no cost-benefit analysis that would allow that.
“It is something that would have to be considered but it won’t be the sole determinant that rules the outcome.”
The Coalition made a surprise announcement on Wednesday that it wanted to decentralise as many government departments as possible, moving the positions of city-based public servants to Australia’s regions in a dramatic reshaping of the bureaucracy.
Fiona Nash, the minister for regional development, said government departments would be asked to justify why they thought they were unsuitable for decentralisation if they did not want to relocate.
She called on corporate Australia to join the decentralisation drive, flagging it as a “long-term project”.
She said rural, regional and remote Australians deserved the careers and flow-on benefits offered by departments as much as capital city Australians did.
“Departments will need to actively justify if they don’t want to move, why all or part of their operations are unsuitable for decentralisation,” she said.
Joyce has tried to assuage concerns about the volume of public servants who may be asked relocate to the regions under the plan, saying the project won’t be as big as some fear.
But he said some people who had reacted negatively to the idea were being parochial.
“Decentralisation also involves moving from the centre of some cities to the suburbs and edges,” he said on Thursday. “The vast majority of government, your taxation department, treasury and finance will be in Canberra ... the vast majority of funds will still be spent in Canberra.
“We won’t be moving the treasury department to Albury. That is obvious. There is some hype and ventilation by certain areas and I think it is for parochialism.”
He said the Coalition was trying to better connect government departments dealing with pests, plants and animals with the regions, “[like] being in an area such as Armidale, which has a university that deals with plants and animals.”
“I don’t think we will move the agriculture department,” he said. “Let’s put this one to bed. We won’t move it out of Canberra. There will be sections within the agricultural department that could be considered.”
He said the decentralisation project ought to help reduce pressure on housing in cities such as Sydney and Melbourne.
“We had a poll the other day,” he said. “One of the things that was recognised strongly within that poll is people understand, if you want to get an affordable house, a great way to do it is to move to a regional area such as Tamworth, Albury, Toowoomba, Rockhampton, where houses are more affordable.”
Joyce has been heavily criticised for forcing the relocation of the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority to Armidale in northern New South Wales.
The forced relocation prompted 20 of 100 regulatory scientists to leave the agency, despite APVMA employees being offered significant incentives to stay.
He defended the move last month, following reports that public servants had been working out of McDonald’s in Armidale because of a lack of suitable office facilities.
Joyce said on Thursday some of the rumours about that forced relocation were “a load of garbage”.
“There are people in the town willing to offer their office for free,” he said. “We offered our office in Armidale.”
